The long-range goal of the SCORE Program at Meharry Medical College is to assist in improving the competitive status of the school's research enterprise relative to other health science centers in the United States. The program seeks to create a research environment wherein faculty will improve their research skills and capabilities to efficiently conduct high quality research, to disseminate their research through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national meetings, and to compete with greater success for independent extramural research funds. Finally, research projects ongoing and proposed in this SCORE application will assist the institution in its mission to conduct basic, clinical and applied research with special emphasis on diseases and conditions that disproportionately affect ethnic minority populations. [unreadable] [unreadable] The revised specific aims of the proposed continuation program are: 1) to increase the scientific productivity in terms of peer reviewed publications by MBRS investigators from approximately four papers per three years (grant years 28-30) to an average of six papers per three years (grant years 32-34), and 2) to increase the acquisition of investigator initiated grants from 10% to 20% of the investigators associated with the SCORE program by year 34. [unreadable] [unreadable] This competing continuation application requests support for nineteen regular research projects and seven pilot projects. Projects are submitted from the School of Medicine departments of Anatomy and Physiology, Biochemistry, Family and Preventive Medicine, Microbiology, Pharmacology, and Psychiatry, as well as from the School of Dentistry. Thus the projects focus on a broad spectrum of health related issues including cancer, sickle cell disease, signaling and transduction mechanisms, oral health, infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS and neuroscience. Presently, the program includes eighteen regular projects. [unreadable] [unreadable]